VENICE (ITALPRESS) – “In 2025 global growth was more robust than expected, despite the strong geopolitical and commercial tensions: world GDP increased by 3.3 percent, half point beyond the forecasts formulated a year ago.” This was said by the governor of the Bank of Italy, Fabio Panetta, in his intervention in Venice at the 32nd Assiom Forex Congress. To support the productive activity, the governor explained, “it has contributed first of all the dynamism of the sectors linked to artificial intelligence – in particular the construction of data centers, become the hub of the technological transformation in place”. This boost is benefiting “with particular intensity the United States”, which records “an average GDP growth of 3.2 percent”.
“The global activity has also boosted, not without surprise, the rapid and persistent increase in international trade – Panetta explained. In China, the ability of exporting companies to reorient excess manufacturing to other markets, in response to US trade barriers, has enabled government growth target of 5 percent.” For 2026, the IMF expects a stable global growth of 3.3 percent, “with low risk linked to a possible correction of financial markets and further deterioration of geopolitical climate.” On the euro area, Panetta stressed that “the European economy also faces this stage with a higher growth than expected and a back-to-back inflation.” The dynamics of GDP, around 1.5 percent, “was supported by the recovery of real incomes and the gradual slowdown in monetary conditions”, but consumption remains “still braked by global uncertainty”.
International trade has resisted the duties better than expected. “Despite the introduction of tariffs, international trade grew by 4 percent in 2025, a rate higher than world GDP and double than expected,” said Panetta. To explain this result has contributed “the application of duties lower than those initially announced and the absence of generalized retaliation”. In addition to half of the expansion, he said, “it is attributable to the strong increase in trade related to artificial intelligence”. The most significant element, according to the governor, is “the deep geographical recomposition of trade flows”. US imports from China contracted over 25 percent, while purchases increased from Mexico, Vietnam and Taiwan.
“The triangulation of trade through countries with more favourable customs regimes suggests that the actual decoupling between the United States and China could be less than suggested by the decline of bilateral flows.” As regards the incidence of duties, Panetta pointed out that “the burden would have so far fallen mainly on the US economy”, with an impact on inflation of “more than half a percentage point”. Foreign exporters would have “held a limited share, estimated around 10 percent.”.
– Photo IPA Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
